Once you’ve downloaded the OpenTX companion, fire it up, and click the little gear button to bring up the preferences menu.

On the first screen, make sure the “Lua” radio box is checked.

Then at the top, select the “Application Settings” tab, and on that page, check the “Use firmware nightly builds” button.

Now get your transmitter and a USB cable.

Hold the two horizontal trim switches towards one another, and power on. You’ll see a screen that says:

Plug your USB into the Taranis and into your computer, and in OpenTX Companion, press the button with the gear, radio, and red arrow – which is to write firmware to radio, and follow the instructions to download the firmware, and write it to your radio.

Congratulations! You are now on a version of OpenTX that can handle the TBS Crossfire Micro!

There’s still a few more steps you need to take.

You would have downloaded the SD Card contents file, so unzip that file, and copy the contents over to your SD card.

Note that your SD card may show up as two separate drives – one called Taranis, which has just two files in it, and another one(name will vary) which has all the folders. Copy into the one with the folders, and overwrite.

Note: If you have any existing LUA scripts or sound packs, don’t copy the scripts or sounds folder.

Finally, copy the firmware file that OpenTX Companion downloaded to your computer into the “Firmware” folder on your SD card.

That’s it for the computer and the radio – we’ll be updating the Crossfire module later, so for now, unplug the Taranis.

Now, restart the Taranis normally(without holding trims) and once it’s started up, long press the Menu button to go into the main radio menu. Press Page until you can see the folders in the SD card, and open up the “Firmware” folder, and long press Enter on the firmware file you copied to the SD card.

The Taranis will ask if you want to update Bootloader – press Enter to confirm, and it’ll take a moment to do its thing.

At this point, you’re ready to get to the Crossfire!

Setting up the TBS Crossfire Micro

At the back of your Taranis Q X7 and X9D, there is a little hatch that opens up to reveal slot for inserting a module.

The TBS Crossfire Micro will snap into that – insert it all the way until the little tabs click. Screw on the antenna that came with the Crossfire, and power on your radio.

Once the radio is on, press the Menu button once to reveal the list of models.

Head down to an empty slot and create a new model.

In the model configuration screen – the first one that shows up – scroll down until you see the option for “Internal RF”. Below that, you’ll see something like D8, D16, or the like. Press Enter on that option, and scroll until you select “OFF”.

Below that, there is an option for External RF.

Turn that on, and new options will pop up below that – on the “Mode” option, press Enter and scroll until you select “CRSF” – this is the TBS Crossfire protocol, and select the channel range – you can keep it 1-8 or 1-16, but 1-8 is more than enough for a miniquad.

At this point, you may wish to update the firmware on your TBS Crossfire Micro.

On your micro receiver, there is a single bind button – power the quadcopter up and you’ll see a red light on the receiver. Press and hold the Bind button on the receiver until the light starts flashing.

Then, on your radio, press the “Bind” button in the menu we just navigated to – the light on the Module will start flashing green, and so will the light on the receiver.

Once both lights are solid green, the receiver is bound to the module!

It may ask you to update the receiver – go ahead and update it. Wait for a few seconds for it to complete, and you’re done.

You can also change settings here such as the region and the frequency you are running. Make sure you are running a frequency that is suitable for your country – check with local hobbyists to make sure you’re using the right one!

To set the failsafe, first make sure the receiver is powered on and bound to your transmitter, then head back into the folder housing the Crossfire script and run the script.

Now you’ll see an option for XF Micro RX. Open that.

Scroll down to where it says Failsafe Mode, and set it to Cut. This will kill the signal as soon as the link has broken, so your quad will drop out of the sky.

Finally, to configure the channels in your RX, scroll down in the XF Micro RX menu until you see the Output Map options.

Map Channel 1 to CSRF TX, and once you select that, Channel 2 will automatically become CSRF RX.

Configuring Betaflight to use TBS Crossfire

In the Configuration menu, under Receiver, choose “Serial RX”, and under Serial RX Provider, choose “CSRF”.

Finally, scroll down and enable Telemetry.

Double check the Receiver menu to make sure everything is working fine!

Configuring Raceflight to use TBS Crossfire

You may not be able to use the “Autodetect wizard” in Raceflight, so head over to the Console and type in:

crsf_t3

Then type save.

To enable telemetry, type in:

telem_crsf=1

and type save.

That’s it, the receiver should be detected now and you can check the inputs to make sure they work – you can do this through the “Radio Setup” wizard.

Taranis Q X7 issues with TBS Crossfire Micro

Some Taranis Q X7 users have issues with the TBS Crossfire micro, where they’ll keep getting a “Telemetry lost” warning.

In this case, you can either solder a tiny little component to inside of your radio, OR do a little software mod to get it to work, but with a bit more latency.

Software mod

You are already running the latest night build of OpenTX on your radio, and you have already updated your Crossfire Micro module. In the Taranis, long press the Menu button, then press page till you get to the “Hardware” page.

On the Hardware page, there will be an option for “Max bauds”.

Change the Baudrate from 40000 to 115200. This will slow down the communication between the Taranis and the module, but it’ll fix the issue.

Hardware mod

I have not done the hardware mod yet, but StingersSwarm has an excellent video detailing how to do it:

There is no loss of range at all. The latency difference is in a few milliseconds, so it’s most likely that you won’t even notice it. Latency is just how fast the command reaches the craft from your radio – 10 ms latency means the craft will receive and act upon your input 10 ms after you give it.